Body Mods

It's been a very long time and I've started doing some stuff again. 

Can't recall if I mentioned this but I decided a long long time ago that MyDolling Heeah would be a great teen Aura but they didn't sell the heads separately. And then when they did their discontinuation sale they did sell them separately so I grabbed two so I could make Aura and Cail. 

 I got my skin tones confused and ordered them in a light tan instead of what I thought would be the more translucent resin, so I was a bit frustrated and put them in the head cabinet for years. 

 And then a couple weeks ago I threw one of the heads on my Dollzone Annie's body to test the fit and gave mini Aura a faceup. 

 

I went searching for a body I would like for him and ended up rather impulsively deciding that the Unoa Elder body was what I wanted. So I acquired an Unoa Elder Belia. It's been a long time since I've seen my Unoa Xyle's neck joint so I forgot that they had WACKY necks that don't work like normal bjd necks, so I was struggling for a few days with what to do. 

I wasn't sure I wanted to mod the neck because if this plan didn't work out I'd have messed up the body. And I also didn't want the Belia head to not be able to attach to anything. 

So I spent 3 days or so trying to mod the Heeah head to fit on the Unoa head back. And I FINALLY got the fit just right, only to discover I hadn't mixed my epoxy properly and it was all mushy and just oozed off. 

I wasn't enjoying the process anymore and didn't want to keep trying to make the head fit right when it clearly just did not want to cooperate, so I broke down and decided to do some neck mods after all. I decided to cut the neck off just below the weird flanged part at the top where the Belia head back fits and turn that into an adapter piece for the Belia head to fit on other bodies. And then I cut off the top half of the Dollzone neck to turn that into the new top of the Unoa body's neck. 

This is the Belia head and head back on the Dollzone body. If I decide she will stay on this body long term I will likely epoxy the neck piece in place. I'm still debating. It's an older body and not the most aesthetically appealing to me, but it poses well and is still quite functional. It will largely depend on how much clothing she ends up wearing, I suppose. 

And this is the upper part of the Unoa body with the Dollzone upper neck attached. The epoxy is still hardening, but afterward I will sand it smooth and blush it to match. It is just a little bit longer than I wanted it to be, so the Heeah head sits higher on it than is probably ideal. I'll test the fit with clothes before I do more mod work though, since Aura tends to wear high collars and it might end up being handy that his neck is overly long. 

It seems I never posted this but I started it last week.

I really need to stop being lazy about setting up the tripod

I decided I wanted to work on some face ups today. Not really for anything in particular but just for practice.

Was trying to decide who I wanted to practice on when I happened upon my L-bi, who has never actually had a proper face up since I got him. He came from Yahoo!Japan with a partially done face up and all I ever did was give him eyebrows in the right color for the characters I used him for.

So I decided I wanted to do his face. And then I also decided while I was at it I would screw around with my modded Iplehouse Jessica head that used to be Orkas.

He came out a little more sunburnt looking than I wanted, but I'll redo it another time. For now it is at least semi functional. I had him in this blonde wig I made when his new body arrived but I just didn't ever really like it. It was a bit too fluffy for his head.

I was pondering making something else when I remembered that I had planned to make him my new Nazoe. So I dug out Nazoe's wig (which has transitioned multiple times in size, starting as a size 9/10, then modded down to a 7/8, and now down to a 6/7) and took that in to fit his little head. I'm much happier with this than I was with the blonde.

It looks a bit like one of the default L-bi wigs if I recall correctly. XD

And next up I was just screwing around. No idea what on earth I wanted to do with the other head cuz it's pretty much a spare and I did all these mods to it and also crushed part of it between a desk and a wall so I don't think it really has any resale value to speak of. But I don't know what I want to do with it. So I guess it's a practice head now. I dont' know. Might go back to my old old plan of making it into Layne.

But that is neither here nor there.

I was mostly just messing around with blushing and shading. And then I decided I wanted to go for the no eyebrows look like Lisbeth Salander or something. I dunno. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Not sure what sort of wig I want to use though so for now there's some baldness action going down.

Possibly something white or black and very spikey. I dunno.

eye mods: Id

I was thinking last time I took photos of him, that I needed to bring Id's eyes in a bit because I'd opened them a bit too much for eyes to sit properly in them.

But I kind of put this off since it didn't seem like a very fun project and doing face ups on heads that small is scary.

Then yesterday I was ... doing something. I completely forget what. And I saw a picture of one of the little 1/6 guys on the Crobidoll website and he had these little teeth and I thought they were adorable and I decided that I wanted to not only bring in Id's eyes but also mod his mouth open a bit so he could have cute teeth too. XD

So I got out the epoxy and made his eyes a bit smaller. And, as always, I overestimated how much I'd need and mixed up too much, so I also gave him little elf ears while I was at it.

None of the pre-faceup pics turned out okay because it was night time and I forgot to turn the brightness back up on my camera. But here is one after the face up so you can see his ears. I should have sanded them more but I was impatient to see if his eye mods would be obvious once he had a face up so I just went for it before sanding more.

And here he is from the front. The eyes aren't even, which is something I also was planning tow ork on before giving him a face up, but again... wanted to be sure I was on the right track before devoting more time to it. But everything seems to blend in pretty much seamlessly around the eyes so I'm very happy about that and will go back in and work on evening them out when I'm feeling less lazy.

The worst part was doing the teeth, honestly. I'm terrible with using brushes on face ups as it is, but I'm even worse when I'm wearing glasses (and I can't wear my contacts for at least a few more days..) My eyes just have no idea how to make sense of something that precise when I'm wearing glasses. I'm sure with enough practice I'd get it down but it's very frustrating since I'm not used to it.

I can live with the asymmetry for now though. It's less obvious in person I think.

And some bonus shots of Shino after having his collar brushed so it looks less matted. He's sort of currently my favorite and has been sitting at my computer desk for the past week or so.

face ups: Orkas and Avignon

EDIT: I could just about punch myself in the face. I went to go check the Elfdoll website and they'd put a normal skin Vivien head up for sale. I guess someone must have cancelled or not paid or something. If I had just been patient I could have saved myself all of this trouble! 

I went ahead and bought it anyway. Seeing the head in person may help me figure out if I've done the eye mods correctly since it's hard to figure out based on photos.

I'm still not 100% sure this head will work the way I want it to or even that I like it enough to use for someone else if it doesn't work for Orkas... but here's a progress update anyway.

Last night I finished sanding epoxy and prepping the head for its first face up. I had this really stupid idea that I should wait until after the face up and see if I liked it before carving in eyelids. I don't even begin to know what I was thinking. Under what circumstances would not having eyelids be beneficial? I don't know.

So I gave it a face up. Hated it. My best friend pointed out that the eyelid area (where they SHOULD have been) needed some color or he needed eyelashes or something. So I wiped the head and left it alone for the night. Then today I went and carved in eyelids and decided to do attempt #2.

I can't decide if I just hate this thing because I did the mods poorly. Or because the wig just isn't doing it for me (I tried on a couple other wigs and liked it a lot better...). Or if it's the eyes I constructed for it (I say constructed because I didn't make the irises. I just assembled a base for them). The eyes are very bright. But they were what I had around that would work because regular 12mm eyes had irises that took up almost the whole eye socket.

He's a bit cross eyed here. It's hard to position his eyes properly due to the uneven eye sockets. I still haven't figured out how to fix that without potentially damaging something. I have since fixed the eyes a bit and can stand to look at him a little more. I don't like what I did with the colors on his face up. But it's better than last night. Last night was just embarrassing.

I went ahead and re-did Avignon's face up because I really want to like her and I've just struggled so much with managing to make her look like her character and look good at the same time. I tried on the first wig I bought for her after redoing her face up and didn't immediately hate it so that's something.

I am considering getting her a mohair wig or something because I just can't find a fiber wig that I'm happy with for her. It's just really hard to find the right color in any kind of wig though. I want something sort of like what she's wearing here but with slightly more red undertones. It kind of photographs like the color I want but in real life it's a more dull brown.

It's been a rather frustrating last few days on the doll front. Still haven't managed to fix Elaria's hair. I'm not sure this wig is even worth the trouble.

back from A-kon

I mentioned a while back that I put Aura on my Popodoll 68cm body and was much more pleased with that match than when he was on the Angelsdoll body I had him on before. Well, I gave it more time and decided that despite the fact that I have at least once in the past drawn him looking a little more muscular, this didn't really mesh with my mental image of him. It was more based on influence from in-game images of Blood Elves.

Or rather... I didn't decide this. I was browsing DoA and saw a thread asking people what they thought about the more muscular trend with dolls these days, and for the most part that doesn't bug me at all, but there are definitely certain characters I wish I could get less muscular bodies for. For example, I always felt that even the relatively slender Domuya bodies were too well-defined for Lyric. If I was sure it would not make him bobble-headed, I would get him a Doll Chateau body, but I'm a little concerned the 60cm body would be too small for his Soom head. More research may be in order.

But I'm getting off topic. Aura, Andael, Statik, Esyrlon, and Doppelganger also have more slender builds (of the non-muscular variety). Doppel works just fine as the 60cm Dollmore body is tiny and works perfectly for him. I'm content with the Domuya flexi-perennial body I have for Esyrlon. It's a little more well-defined than I imagine him in my head, but the overall size is very good. Statik has a modded Thaasa body which leaves him with almost no muscle mass, so I'm happy there.

Andael and Aura have proved more problematic. Neither of them is supposed to be more slender-emaciated like Doll Chateau's bodies and both of their heads are too big for some of the other options out there. I still haven't figured out what to do with Andael, so for now he has to deal with improper body types, but I got an idea a while back for Aura.

I wasn't sure if it would work or if it was too stupid, so I never really mentioned it. But I saw some pictures of the Dollstown 18yr girl bodies and thought the overall shape looked really good. So I did some research for a while and tried to see how it would compare to other dolls in that height range (trying to keep his height relatively close to Cailath's and they're both supposed to be in the 70cm-ish area)

Anyway, I dug up almost every spare doll part I had lying around (as well as some things like lego sets that I hadn't opened) and managed to scrounge up enough money to buy one second hand. It's freshskin so it doesn't really match aura's head, but then I'm not sure what would since Har is an odd sort of pinkish color? I might eventually dye it to match better but for now since you can really only see the very tips of his fingers (need to get him bigger hands at some point) it's not a big deal.

The body arrived RIGHT before I left for A-kon. I was kind of hoping to get the mods done in time to bring him with me, but I didn't have enough time so I just really roughly sanded down the chest and had to call it good enough for the time being.

I did a little more work on it today since I don't have to go back to work until Tuesday. It's still not quite in a state where it's worth showing off, but I tested his clothes on it. I kind of hated it at first since they were made for a body with wider shoulders, so I sat around lamenting the waste of money and decided to try to find someone else the body might work for. I considered giving it to Avelarion and had his robe and head on and everything, and then for some reason I decided to try Aura's head on it again.

I think I like it better this time? I can't decide if the clothing combo looks good or completely ridiculous.

 The first one kind of helps show how slender it makes him? And then of course my camera didn't want to focus for a straight on shot except for the one time I was screwing around holding the camera at an angle. But there he is from the front. I don't feel like he looks exceptionally bobble-headed so that is good. As I mentioned, I'm really waffling on whether the red on white is good or bad. I'll probably re-make his base layer robe with another brocade of some sort if I decide the white isn't working for me. I do like the idea of a pattern on it. Also, Avelarion's robe is far better constructed than Aura's was.

Hopefully this will also give me some motivation to update Avelarion's outfit. Aura's gloves need re-designing I think. And I may go back in and line his hood to help hide how badly brocades fray. Possibly assault it with fray-check?  It was meant to be a prototype. I didn't expect to actually like it as much as I do. I would re-make it but it turned out completely different from the pattern I drafted, thanks to my failure at sewing. But I ended up liking the messed up design better than what I had planned so I'd have to figure out how to make the same mistake again on purpose. XD

Anyway... I'm really happy with it aside from the clothing fitting difficulties. If money was not an issue, I'd buy like three more of these bodies to do the same mod to (and maybe even some to not mod and actually use as girls). It definitely has a lot of the issues mentioned in the Dollstown 18yr thread like the difficulty sitting up un-aided, but it's so elegant looking that I just really don't care.

Got distracted and it randomly occurred to me that the Spiritdoll Elegance body might work well for Andael. Will have to look into some head size comparisons between that and Migidoll and possibly save up for that next. That is of course assuming that Batchix and Donn Kinney don't steal all of my money this summer with their impending doll releases... Maybe I should shoot to start saving for a new body for Andael this winter. XD

And in closing, here is my favorite shot of Aura from my mini shoot today. I love when his hair is being crazy and unruly.

I know I've already written like an entire novel for this entry, but one more thing occurred to me. Iyrilaeth's new wig (which I should get some pics of real quick) --okay back-- has blonde and white like Aura's does. Anyway, I think this is kind of a cool coincidence because it's sort of my headcanon that in my story's universe, those two are related somehow. Aura only has one kid, Elaria, and having Iyrilaeth be older than them would ruin the timeline, but I never planned out Cailath's children so it's possible Iyrilaeth could be descended from his line. Just random thoughts. XD

And in closing (for real this time) here is Iyrilaeth's hair all cut and stuff.

Doppelganger

I was debating on who to work on next, because while it might make sense to just start in on working on things like Cailath's wig or his clothes next, I need breaks from my projects so I don't get burnt out on them.

I was considering what to do and contemplating various dolls I just don't spend enough time with when I glanced at Doppelganger. I've never given him a proper face up. I mean.. he had a great one when he arrived by someone much more talented than me, but it just wasn't right for his character and I sort of modified it to work with him.

----afsdlkjwrjkewljrlwekj. As I typed that sentence I realized I forgot his scar. Dangit... I'll have to add that later.

Anyway. I decided to redo him because... I don't know why. I just decided I should. And while I was at it I decided to smooth out his elf ear mods and blush them to match his body better.

I took care of the ears yesterday but then I just didn't feel up to doing a face up because I was exhausted so I put that off for today.

It's a lot like the old one but with less perfect eyebrows and eyeliner, BUT better eye shadow (because that was one of my additions to the old face up) and a cuter nose. (I've developed a bit of a thing for blushing noses a bit pinkish/red at the tip... I used to think this was such a ridiculous practice. What has happened to me?)

 I should have gotten a better shot of the ears without his hair in the way but oh well. As you can see they don't match perfectly. I used to be so good at mixing paints to match other colors but lately I've been having a lot of trouble. I'm not entirely displeased though since my ears are also more red than my face so it doesn't feel entirely absurd.

And here is his as-yet-scarless face. The next time you see him (so long as I'm not a lazy butt) that will be a thing that exists.

mind games with myself

Every time I work on a project, I sort of have a routine I go through. It goes something like this:

-reach a point where I think things are okay
-take pictures for reference
-realize there's a problem
-decide to ignore the problem because I just want to be done
-ignore the problem for a few hours/day/or longer
-decide I am just too unhappy to allow the problem to continue to exist
-finally break down and try to fix the problem

Usually this results in going back to step 1 and repeating this entire process multiple times.

Anyway, after some serious contemplating and some helpful comments I finally found my motivation to mod Cailath's head more. So I broke out the epoxy and worked on his chin, and then decided I might as well do the eyes while I was working on that.

Right now I am waiting for the epoxy to cure but I think this will work out better when it does! (hopefully. I'm often quite optimistic right after doing something and it's not until later that I realize where I went wrong)

And a few hours and some sanding later, we have face up results:

I gave him some facial scars cuz I imagine in his line of work he would have some. Also there were some spots where the blushing was coming out darker for no particular reason and I just didn't feel like starting over from scratch, so it seemed like a good idea to just add extra scars to cover them. lol

twins

I took a bunch of blank in-progress shots of Cailath's head during the modding process, but they're all kinda blurry and gross looking.

So here are some crummy face up shots:

I feel like he looks a lot more similar to Aura now, aside from the nose and chin. The cheek and jaw area is allowed to be different because Cailath is a rogue and a lot more active in different ways than Aura. So that's fine. I guess if I break down and mod his chin and nose more I might also change his eye shape a bit  But for now I am happier with him than I was.

my new dremel bit

A bit ago I found this buffing and finishing bit for a dremel and the picture with it showed someone smoothing out wood with it. I thought it might be handy for smoothing out mods I'd been working on and save the effort of sanding by hand.

Well, I tested it on resin and it actually sands the area down. I guess resin is less tough than wood so that makes some sense. What I did realize I could do with it was sand things down for modifications much more smoothly than with my normal dremel bits.

So let's backtrack a bit. After doing Deidara's mods I decided I wanted to update Sasori as well, and a bit ago I took a picture into photoshop to see what I'd have to do to make it work okay. It seemed like potentially more trouble than the head was worth so I only got as far as marking the areas I'd want to sand down and then set the head aside.

But with the new dremel bit in hand, I figured the worst case scenario was that I destroyed a head I was considering just ditching anyway, so I might as well test this on it and see if I couldn't attempt to pursue the mods I'd had in mind.

After some sanding, his cheeks are definitely significantly slimmer than before. It is now probably safe to start on additive mods like making the eyes smaller.

After that I decided to grab my Leon Kennedy Minimee who has been sitting around collecting dust. In person he just felt far too flat. And that would be fine for certain types of characters who are supposed to be more stylized (such as Sasori and Deidara here) but the features he did have just didn't mesh with that flatness.

So I grabbed him and decided to go in and define his brow and cheeks more.

I didn't even bother to wipe his face first, as you can see. I figured I could use the places I'd attempted to blush in structure as guidelines for actually carving it in. I am relatively pleased with the results so far.

BONUS! Natural lighting shot of Avelarion's face up. His head feathers came off when I tried to sit him down on the chair. This resulted in some mild face up chipping but that part won't be visible once I put it back on anyway so not the end of the world. 

change of plans (body mods and face up practice)

Everything was settled. I was planning to work on Batu's clothes today since I wasn't working.

Then last night I ended up looking at this Impldoll body I have and the proportions have always felt a bit off to me. It could just be the fact that it's more stylized so it doesn't look like it actually has hip bones. I don't know.

Anyway, somehow when I got home I ended up deciding to mod the body's torso shorter before I did anything else.

I decided to be slightly more 'scientific'(??) about it than usual since I wasn't entirely happy with how my last torso shortening turned out. So I marked off a few spots 1cm apart and then took a picture.

The body is too small for the head but I'm not really in a position to buy another one at the moment so it's just gonna have to do. Anyway I then took the picture into photoshop and put the upper part on a separate layer from the lower part and started to experiment with where I thought it looked best. Based on that, I was going to cut the torso 2cm above my chosen line and then round it out.

I ended up needing half markings because my favorite position was between two of my numbers. So I marked in half centimeters after the photoshop bit and figured out where I needed to cut. Then it was off to the great outdoors to saw away at things and bury myself in resin dust. The respirator kept everything out of my lungs but protective eye wear is a little less good at that since resin dust can sneak in through the ventilation holes.

I washed off all the pieces to get rid of all the dust and set them out to dry in the bathroom. I seldom bother to actually smooth out things like this because they're not going to be visible under any reasonable circumstance. Now that I know the joint functions, it would be something I would consider, but I wasn't keen on going to that much trouble if I might have to just dremel it some more in a few minutes.

I tested it with the upper body before restringing just to be sure it fit but sometimes joints seem fine and then you string the body and they're completely non-functional.

Here is the finished product. Not exactly like the mock up but pretty close and I am happier with it than before. I was going to attempt to make her into a character from my main story so she'd fit in better with everyone else, but I have had it in my head since I first got her that I wanted to make her into another character of mine, Selenor, whose name is based on my mis-hearing of the name Celaeno as a child, and who is also (not-so-coincidentally) a harpy.

Then I was going to really quickly give Andael and Statik new face ups and somehow that turned into airbrushing practice. Andael's face was coming along fairly well, and then I turned around and accidentally knocked his head off the table and it landed in a pile of charcoal and cement. Fun.

One of his elf ear mods came off (they're really crummy hastily applied ones anyway so it wasn't a huge loss and I just super glued it back on) and he got a small chip in his nose, but otherwise the only damage was to his face up. Often, when I like how something is coming along and it gets ruined, my first instinct is to try to salvage it rather than just start over even if I know that won't work.

But I tried to anyway and his face ended up way too dark as a result. I was about to start practicing on Statik but then Selly got home and we went to go see Captain America and I lose the light so I decided to finish him up with pastels since that was my plan in the beginning anyway. There are plenty of others who need new face ups who can be test subjects and Andael will need a redo at some point because he's far too dark for his body now.

But here they are:

Statik looks insanely pale next to Andael but I'm happier with his new look than I was with my older attempt at doing his face. I miss Andael's freckles. He wasn't even supposed to have them before. I just re-did the eyebrows from when his head was originally intended to be Aleksandr, but I like them so much I might just make them canon. But that will have to wait until I redo his face and make it less crazy over-colored. I actually don't mind the color but it just looks too out of place next to his body.

Tomorrow work is closed for Easter so I am hoping to actually get some clothing work done. Batu is theoretically first priority but I have given up on making myself any promises because sometimes inspiration just drags me off in another direction. I also have some ideas for clothes for my potential Selenor that I am tentatively excited about.

And of course Deidara needs something resembling proper clothes (thought I am fairly certain I still have his super simple flashback outfit lying around in the clothing drawer something) and my Istthraen also needs clothes. I'm really bad at designing skimpy clothes for guys though so that is proving challenging.

Mod project: Cailath, continued

Apologies in advance for the horrible photos in this one. I couldn't get the camera to focus well.

I woke up this morning feeling sick and feared that all of my plans for today were ruined. So I went back to sleep and didn't bother to set an alarm, and when I woke up again I was feeling a lot better but still not 100%. I've tried to take it easy so I didn't end up doing as much as I'd originally planned, but I did do some sanding work on my project head and then gave it a quick face up to see if things were working out the way I wanted.

 Sadly, I felt like they really didn't look enough alike and of course crushing disappointment started to set in.

However, while I felt that the head wasn't working well as Cailath, I was relatively pleased with it overall and decided I should consider other looks for him. (in the above picture he was borrowing Kael's hair since I did not get to mess around with attempting to make him a wig today like I'd planned to initially)

I threw one of my red wigs on him for funsies. I'm keen on redheads so I had difficulty telling if I actually liked this on him or if I just was biased because it was red.

And then I threw a shorter blonde wig on him and have been letting him sit around on the computer desk like that. In looking at the pictures, I think part of the problem is perhaps the shape of his chin and jawline. And of course there is the issue of the way his lower face (in particular around the lips) protrudes by comparison. It was much more intense when I first got the head but still very noticeable (to me) when compared to Aura.

The nose shape also might be part of it.

I am less displeased with things overall as I give it time but I'm not sure I have the patience required to make this work for what I'd intended. I will see how I feel after sleeping on it.

mini projects

I got on a bit of a selling things kick and ended up doing a few trades and fun stuff like that.

The first thing I got in a partial trade was a Leon Kennedy Minimee head. Ever since seeing Enzyme's on DoA, I've kind of wanted one.

Anyway, the one I got had been modded and the eyes were opened more. The above picture is how it looked when it arrived. I forgot to take my own pictures so that's one of the sales pictures. I decided I would just mod the eyes into a more serviceable shape. The default eyes for the sculpt looked almost closed to me so I sort of just chose a shape to sculpt them into.

Here's the head after a round of epoxying. I haven't sanded them at all yet so they're pretty uneven. But I did get some eyes for him.

I got a really good (in my opinion) deal on a Resinsoul immature bust, which I put on Elaria's body since I really didn't intend for hers to be as big as the default one that came with her.  NSFW picture of the new bust on her body.

The fit isn't perfect so I will have to do some modding, but for now I feel like it looks fine with clothes on. Behold my glorious photoshop skills trying to hide the mess that is my house.!

more mods and some face ups

I modded Orkas' head more after my post last night. I was looking at Elfdoll Vivien (a strong contender to take over the role if this head doesn't get its act together and work for me) and decided I would attempt to instill some of that sort of expression into the head I currently own because if it works out it will save me time and money.

Anyway....

Oh god that second one is orangey. Should have color corrected that but I so seldom feel the need to with the new camera that I didn't think about it. Oh well. Anyway... I still feel like he comes across a bit smirky or something when the camera is looking down on him. Also not sure I accomplished frowny squinty so much as just "the sun is in my eyes" squinty. But ... I chalk that up to my novice level of sculpting skills. I feel like it looks a bit better in person. He looks a bit young for his character now (I'm not sure why having smaller eyes makes him appear younger to me but... I have no idea how my brain works when it comes to 'shelling' characters.)

Here is a s hot of Iyrilaeth. His new face is very minimalist so far because I was quite frustrated after dealing with Orkas. I'm relatively pleased with his new, more neutral expression. I feel like ideally I should have built up the epoxy a bit more so there wasn't still an indent where his old mouth corners used to be. I'm too lazy to fix that right now though and it's functional on a basic level. This shot makes his nose look huge.

mouth mods

ended up deciding I did want to redo Orkas' face up. But then I decided one side of his mouth looked potentially more smiley than the other. During a discussion with Selly about why I needed to fix this, I realized that, whether or not I liked the Cyril sculpt as is, I needed to mod it if I wanted it to properly fit Iyrilaeth's character.

So after spending 90 years trying to tint epoxy and still failing spectacularly, I altered both of their mouths in an attempt to make them less smiley.

I decided to do Iyrilaeth's at the last second so his face up is only partly wiped because I was hurrying to make sure the epoxy wouldn't get too hard to be easily worked. I don't like how large Orkas' eyes are by comparison. Tempted to close them a bit or something. We'll see.

trying a new method of adding thigh swivel joints

I've been seeing people do this since I first joined DoA back in 2006, but I had never tried it myself. What I'm referring to is the use of PVC pipe to make a swivel joint in the thigh.

Normally I like to make it so the dolls can pull their knees up to their chests when doing a swivel joint, so I sculpt a rounded area with epoxy or cast it in resin (I used to have a small silicone mold to cast these in but I lost it in a move and haven't bothered to make a new one.)

Anyway, this PVC pipe method seemed simpler and easier so I had been meaning to give it a try. I brought small pieces of pipe for this about five years ago and only just today got around to trying this out.

I didn't take pictures because I didn't expect it to be worthwhile to do so. There are other tutorials on this subject and I've done step by step pictures of my other method of doing these before.

What I didn't anticipate was wanting pictures to compare and contrast the difficulty level of doing this vs. what I normally do. As it turns out, I feel like this is actually a lot more difficult (even if it is more straightforward) than my normal method. Getting the holes just the right size was very frustrating and I actually destroyed a dremel bit in the process. (Luckily it was one that I never use and since I never plan to do this sort of mod using this method again, I won't miss it much).

Anyway, Alek can now cross his legs and/or swing them off to the side. Good stuff. I marked off the legs for this mod about the same time as I got the pipe for it, so it's been a long time coming. (At the time this was Deidara's body but I'm not sure he'll be getting it back anytime soon).

Anyway, that was a bit more of a rant but oh well.

silly things

Today I finally broke down and got new Testor's Dullcote. I was just ignoring the issue for a bit because the airbrush was doing fine, but airbrushed sealant scratches off easier and after finally getting Shino a look I'm okay with I didn't want it to scratch off. So I grabbed a handy dandy 40% off coupon and headed to Michael's!

I came home and gave him and Statik a layer of Testor's sealing and re-glossed lips and eyelids. And then I decided to modify a coat for winter! I have a red wool coat (I like red) but it was too small on me before, but now it fits and I wanted to be able to wear it this winter. Was a bit plain though. No embellishments or anything. So I added some goldish sleeve... things. Um... see the picture. I also replaced all the buttons. That you can't really see in the picture.. because my batteries were dying and the camera didn't want to get a clear shot for some reason.

(The subtitle says it's a modification/customization blog focusing primarily on bjds. Not exclusively.)
Now you can see what I meant about the sleeve thingy. It didn't have anything there. Just a plain sleeve ending. I cut out some spare fabric from the inside of the coat where it wouldn't be missed to make the little red ... doodad that holds the gold strap in place. 

And I got a few new pictures of Shino. Not in natural lighting, but I feel like they came out better than yesterday's picture.

 Too bright. But you can see his face up okay.

And too dark. But.. I liked the composition. Sorta. XD I don't even know. I fail at getting an in-between setting on my camera.

discontent

After completing Aeri's outfit, I felt like Esyrlon's was vastly inadequate by comparison. I was already a little underwhelmed by it, but it felt especially lacking after doing something that complex.

I sincerely wished he was a crossdresser so that I could make something similarly ornate and pretty XD Alas, he's not, so I had to find some way to make an outfit that was at least somewhat masculine but still reasonably interesting.

So last night I grabbed the sketchbook and drew this. His white satin under-robe deal w ill be modified for the main part of this and I'll probably use some of the leftover grey fabric from his over-robe for some of the accents. I may find some other way to incorporate the original grey robe too, but probably not for daily use since it's a pain to locate his arms in those mile long sleeves.

The belt was based on one I saw at Forever 21 a while back. Err.. based on a bracelet I saw there. So I went back there today to see if it was still there, but sadly they seemed to be all out and I was sad thinking I'd have to re-design that portion of the outfit.

I was almost certain I wouldn't find the exact same bracelet somewhere else, but I stopped in Claire's and they actually had one that was extremely similar. It cost more, but I wasn't about to pass up my chance twice, especially not now that I had a concept that included it.

I have to remove Esyrlon's head to get his outfit on and off, so while I had his head off anyway I decided to fix his scrawny Domuya body's neck.

Sard's neck hole is too big for it, so I had to make this silly hot glue neck piece to raise the head higher and give it some semblance of posing capability. This was never intended to be a long-term fix but somehow it stayed in use for like a year. Maybe more.

 But today I did this with epoxy. It's a bit weird looking without the head on, but with the head it's not very visible and should, theoretically, allow for better range of motion and make Esyrlon look like he actually has a neck without needing a neck piece.

Also waiting on Loki's head to dry after a healthy dose of airbrushing. Then it's off to face up land!

And the crappily face upped head:

 I would not post pictures of this, but since I will have to go back in and fix the eyes a bit more, I'm willing to humiliate myself. If I just think of it a picture that will later be useful to show progression, it's not too painful to post it where people can see. At least it kind of helps show off some of the facial structure. And you can also see the not-yet-complete wig that will be used for him. It needs some work to get it to behave and I have to redo the flippy parts in the back. But at least I managed to get it to go back like that.

And an update to show how Esyrlon's outfit is coming along. Looking a bit more dress-like than I was shooting for, but it's not done yet so ... there's hope.  Possibly. At the very least, this thing will be easier to take off and put on again than it was before. And his head functions. So there's that as well.

 If I was to do this again (which I don't think I will because it was annoying just to get this far) I would do this layer in the grey fabric instead of white.